1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method of examining an array element in which plural elements are arrayed in a predetermined arrangement and to an array element examination device, particularly to a method and a device and more which are suitable for examination of fiber positions in a fiber array block.
2. Description of the Related Art
In a conventional array element examination method, the entire array element is photographed by, for example, a CCD camera or the like, photographing signals are image-processed, and the position of each element is obtained. Alternatively, by detecting each element with a movable stage, the relative position of each element is obtained from the movement of the stage.
The conventional examination method is constituted as aforementioned, but recently the elements have been made increasingly fine. Therefore, an element position precision of 1 .mu.m or less is also increasingly requested.
In this respect, in the image processing by the CCD camera, since plural elements are entirely photographed as they are, the photographing range is limited in order to obtain a high resolution. For example, to obtain a resolution of 0.1 .mu.m, the range is limited to several tens of .mu.m.
On the other hand, in a case where the movable stage is used, a measurement range can be enlarged, but the examination device becomes very expensive because the stage has to be moved with a high precision.